Conservatives blast Liberals for trying to 'ram' controversial lawful access bill through House

Conservatives blast Liberals for trying to 'ram' controversial lawful access bill through House

Motion tabled Tuesday would prevent MPs from putting forward further amendments

Conservative MPs are taking issue with how the Liberal government is trying to push its controversial lawful access legislation through the House of Commons before MPs break for the summer.

Government House leader Steven MacKinnon tabled a motion on Tuesday that, if passed, would cut down the time the House public safety committee can consider Bill C-22, which would require some service providers to retain certain customer data so that police and spies can request it during investigations.

"The Liberals are attempting to ram Bill C-22 in a speedy and undemocratic way," Frank Caputo, the Conservative public safety critic, told reporters on Parliament Hill.

The motion would direct the committee to wrap up its clause-by-clause review of the bill — meant to be the final review before the committee refers the legislation back to the House — and prevent MPs from putting forward new amendments.

The motion would also limit debate on the bill once the committee returns it to the House.

"They're using their manufactured majority in what might be the most aggressive programming motion I've ever seen," Caputo said.

The Liberals reached majority status in the House earlier this year after winning a slate of byelections and several opposition MPs defected to join the governing party.

The proposed legislation promises to help law enforcement and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) obtain more digital information, more quickly — something the security community has been pushing for since the advent of the internet.

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Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has called for the bill to be passed before the House breaks for the summer at the end of this week.

Conservatives want the government to split the bill in two — giving additional time to study the more controversial second half: the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act.

Caputo said that his party is willing to pass the first section of Bill C-22, which would lower the legal threshold for law enforcement and intelligence bodies to access basic subscriber information and speed up investigations, "as swiftly as possible."

He said the second part of the bill has "been way too quickly brought to committee. We need to see more of it."

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When pressed on the legislation during Tuesday's question period, Anandasangaree accused the Conservatives of trying to hold up the bill and argued that the government can't "cherry pick" which portions of the legislation to implement.

The Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act would require electronic service providers to develop and maintain the technical capabilities to enable police and CSIS to obtain communications and information for their probes.

It would also require "core providers" to retain metadata, akin to call logs, for a certain period of time.

Both privacy advocates and tech giants have raised concerns about the second part of the bill.

Two of the country's most prominent civil rights advocates — Citizen Lab and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association — have argued that it could create "a surveillance capability regime" with minimal restrictions.

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U.S. tech giants like Apple, Meta and Google argue the bill's technological demands would weaken or break encryption, a key safety measure used by activists, lawmakers, journalists and everyday Canadians to safeguard communications and other important information.

Conservative MP Jacob Mantle raised a point of order on Tuesday to argue that the motion went against parliamentary procedure.

While such programming motions are typical, Mantle argued that the one relating to Bill C-22 is especially egregious because it sets a retroactive deadline for proposed amendments. The motion says that only amendments submitted to the committee on Monday can be considered, even though the committee's MPs are meeting Tuesday to discuss the bill.

"It cannot be in order that a bill provides a deadline retroactively [and] known only to the government members … unbeknownst to any other member of this House until that deadline was past," Mantle said in the House.

Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen responded to argue that the House has the "powers to limit and, in some cases, waive its privileges."

The Speaker didn't immediately rule on Mantle's concerns.

The Liberals previously split their first attempt at passing lawful access, then known as Bill C-2, in half after it faced criticism for being too intrusive.

The other half of that bill focused on border security and immigration. It became law earlier this year.

Darren Major is a senior writer for CBC's parliamentary bureau in Ottawa. He previously worked as a digital reporter for CBC Ottawa and a producer for CBC's Power & Politics. He holds a master's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in public affairs and policy management, both from Carleton University. He also holds a master's degree in arts from Queen's University. He can be reached at darren.major@cbc.ca.

With files from Catharine Tunney and The Canadian Press